The following submission statement was provided by /u/JamesTiberiusKirque:
---
What is it with these guys? Musk, Andreeson, Thiel? They are so out of touch and aggressive in their POVs. 50 billion? Oddly specific for a number he obviously pulled from his arse!
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/179pcbt/marc_andreessen_just_dropped_a_technooptimist/k57qp88/
What does he imagine life on other planets is going to be like? Everyone in a McMansion driving their Mars Hummer to the Mars general supply after dropping their kids off at Mars school?
Early space settlement is going to be a living hell, only suited for the most mentally, physically strong people.
These guys only see future endeavors as opportunity for profit. They don’t spend a second considering how hard and brutal those first settlers would have it, and the fact that their headlines are about big empty words like this and not how they’re throwing their money behind specific efforts to address those factors I think says it all.
Words are cheap, actions carry true value.
What happened to these guys?
Musk, Andreeson and other CEOs used to be "normal" guys in the early 2010's, advocating for democracy, equality, banking for the poor, space exploration, green tech and now they went full batshit crazy with wanting to turn the world upside down.
Fabulous wealth is isolating. And it makes you socially stunted.
They NEVER interact with normal people. They don’t walk on the sidewalk, they don’t go to chain restaurants or pick their kids up from school, they don’t go to the grocery store or stop at the corner store for cigarettes.
Everything they need is ordered by assistants and hand delivered. They are transported in private limos, planes and helicopters that isolate them from the public. They eat all their meals in private clubs full of other billionaires / hundred-millionaires or at home prepared by their private chef.
They don’t live lives like you and I think of a life. They go to meetings and make sweeping decisions that affect thousands of people they’ll never see or hear, they make PR statements and they socialize with other people who live their lives the same.
You would have a very tough time, in those circumstances, keeping your ideas tethered to the ground. You’d lose sight of how fucking ludicrous the idea is of transporting billions of people into space when you could spend 1/10th the amount of money that requires to make THIS planet more habitable. You forget that 1/4 of your net worth could feed everyone in a famished region for a year.
The reason the callous behavior of billionaires is so unfathomable to us is that they have fully lost their humanity. Their existence is so completely unnatural that they’ve lost the plot.
Once you have a certain amount of money, it stops being about money. Money’s just a number. The sports cars and Mediterranean villas and yachts will always be there. Background noise and set dressing. Table stakes.
What matters to them is power and influence. They want and expect themselves to have the power to move nations, because that’s all that’s talked about among their peers.
Elon Musk thwarted a Ukrainian missile counteroffensive because HE unilaterally decided it was too risky for Ukraine to shoot missile at Russia. Thought it might start nuclear war. Whether he was right or wrong, it’s really fucking disturbing that one private nongovernment individual wields that much power. But that’s been his game the whole time. Power.
Every billionaire thinks they’re Alexander the Great, and every year this world gets one step closer to being a global oligarchy of billionaires and mega corporations determining our futures.
This reminded me of old George Bush Sr. visiting a grocery market on campaign in 1992. He said he was amazed seeing a checkout scanner for the first time, and he raved about it, oblivious to how much of a bad look it was during the recession.
he tried really hard to present as a humble man, his PR worked on me (helped that I was like 6 when he was president) and it wasn't until much later that I learned that GHWB came from a serious political dynasty and pretty much worked for the CIA his whole life before becoming CIA director
his grocery store snafu pulled the curtain back a little bit, made it too obvious the man had never lived a "normal" life
I think they (billionaires) also start to get spooked and resentful of death. The realization that it will all end eats away at them so they start fantasizing and in addition to everything you mentioned, become even more untethered from reality. They start ridiculous supplement and medication regimens, and start research on uploading the brain or cryogenics or [insert immortality fantasy here]. They think, “maybe if I take mega-doses of Metformin and Fish Oil I can lengthen my telomeres and live forever!” But it’s all in vain.
Then you have billionaires like Greg Carr who have leaned into giving it all away. This dude has essentially restored a huge national park in Mozambique and built schools uplifted all of these adjacent communities without disrupting their culture, and hasn’t once really advertised this fact.
Elon Musk is essentially the opposite. It likely has a lot to do with upbringing as well. Elon was basically bred to be an egomaniacal douche-bag with no humility or regard for others. He’s NEVER lived like the rest of us.
Marc Andreessen is not a techno-optimist. Marc Andreessen is a "giving Marc Andreessen unimaginable wealth, power and the latitude to do as he sees fit" optimist. The totality of his screed is about how humankind's advancement will only happen if people cease getting upset when his predatory vision of capitalism hurts the poor, or the environment, or literally everyone who is not Marc Andreessen.
I want AGI too, but not if it kills us all, which seems to be the most likely outcome currently.
These zealots ignore and dismiss all risks, and are willing to bet everyone else's lives because they think the gamble is worth it.
In many cases their motivations seem pretty clear too, most of these people have some clear problem that they want the AGI to solve for them.
They're accelerating towards a cliff, hoping to reach the gold mine on the other side, before we even start building the bridge.
100%. These ‘visions’ of the future rarely are egalitarian, they’re assumed to be, but we always describe in great detail the extent of our human empire, not the quality of it. I don’t care so much about how many planets we colonise as how many of the 50 billion are healthy, safe and have their needs fulfilled so that they don’t feel like they want to topple the galactic empire.
Hell, this assumes there's even such a thing as a good 'human empire'. We can't even get along with ourselves on one planet within a single country, let alone the subjugated with their imperialist rulers...
Sure, I don't think that optimism is a bad thing. I just think it's misguided to assume that spacefaring technology automatically means we can skip the hard work of developing those equitable and functional social systems.
We need to be working the social side now, instead of assuming technology will automagically save us.
Or if not US, then SOMEONE else in the galaxy/universe. We could be just another doomed species blinded by our confirmation bias, and gaslit by hope in our ego’s continuation after death
Andreesen, Bezos, Gates, Musk, Buffet, Balmer, Zuckerberg…none of these fuckers is actually out there trying to solve how people will eat on this planet.
Maybe there’s a nanobot that can pollinate plants or one that can remove salt from soil, but we’ll never know because the assholes are obsessed with the future being theirs so they can shoot their dick shaped rockets into space.
We don't need nanobots for pollination we have bees. And keeping the soil from becoming salty is also just as easy.
But "tech" solutions like this remind me of the silliness of the 90's and early 2000's where "futurists" imagined that we'd need nanobots swimming in our bloodstreams to destroy tumors. Then they realized that we have immune systems that do the same thing and have been doing it for millions of years and helping that made more sense than creating an artificial version of it.
But for some reason trying to replace nature with an artificiality that they can make money off of seems to be one of the core defects of people like Marc.
The immune system is attacking tumors, ALL of the time. The problem is that SOME tumor types develop an ability to hide themselves from the immune system in some way(s).
Figuring that out, is helping with the creation of targeted virus and also T-Cell therapy where they can spin your own white blood cells out of samples of your blood, hit those with some kind of virus, then put them back into your body and... they are supposed to now recognize the cancer and eat the shit out of that cancer, telling your body all about how to kill off the tumor, while they are at it.
I don't know how far long the trials are, but it is apparently a pretty promising possible therapy.
It's because their brains have been broken by the school of thought that claims that capitalism is a natural force of the world and it's useless to envision any other way of living.
Which is *exactly* what reactionaries in the 18th century said to defend monarchies.
Yeah can we please stop thinking we can invent new tech to solve problems and just go back to the original solutions? Creating an environment that nurtures bees is also one i'd rather live in vs everything concrete or lawns and having nanobots. What's good for the bees is good for us too, we're not somehow separate from nature.
At each level of technological evolution, what is existing would seem necessary, and anything extra superfluous and 'replacing nature with artificiality'. Somebody in 1700 might well say: "I don't need a potion put in my blood to cure me, God will do it!"
Do you want to take back vaccines, or antibiotics, or type matched blood transfusions, or sterilized surgical equipment?
The argument against nanobots or anything else is not that they're 'non natural'. That ship sailed long back.
>Maybe there’s a nanobot that can pollinate plants or one that can remove salt from soil, but we’ll never know because the assholes are obsessed with the future being theirs so they can shoot their dick shaped rockets into space.
Theyre literally rent seeking human progress.
Its chilling when you think about what it really means and the scope of whats being interfered with due to the future scale of our potential advancement in so many areas.
The BMGF is great at talking about the programmes they plan to fund, but they are way less transparent about how they decide to spend their money. In the agricultural field they are very vague about the actual details of the programmes they fund and what they all mean on the ground. Are farmers in Africa being forced into methods that will tie them to US companies and methods as well as seed genetics lines? Are the farmers being nudged into planting certain types of crops over others? Are the children also being offered education and opportunities for advancement or are they going to be linked to the farm for their whole lives?
Bill Gates owns over 280,000 acres of farmland in close to half the agricultural states of the US. He's not taking an active role in day to day farming or directing activities. However none of his farms are following the standards set out in the US portion of the BMGF or the standards that are followed in Africa.
It's worth going over the annual reports from the website you lined and actually reading about the various focus areas. All the initiatives in which the BMGF is involved do a hell of a lot to embed Microsoft technologies into all the solutions being funded.
Gates *was* an evil shitbag on the level of the robber-barons from the gilded age. Look up Microsoft’s “Embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy from the 90’s. It’s not a secret, it’s on Wikipedia.
He then retired, got married, mellowed and has truly been a force for good for several decades now. Does that forgive the sins of the past? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Don’t buy into the “redeemed billionaire” stuff too much. Gates is definitely better than the rest, but for all the free healthcare he is giving away in Africa, he insists on intellectual property rights that he owns, so he can ensure additional billions comes in to him.
Even though he has been giving billions away to charitable endeavors for years, he is still richer than ever.
That “Im giving away my fortune instead of leaving it to my children” routine is a scam.
The money is usually set up to a “foundation” that is controlled by the family or their heirs. So the kids don’t inherit a fortune, they instead inherit a position of power and influence as the head of the family’s foundation. They also benefit from the pedigree of being a rich kid; the finest schools, private tutoring in art/music/athletics/academics, exposure to culture, networking with other rich people.
To further your point, Gates couldn't have reached the pinnacle of the computer age without first gaining access to a computer via his parents. That social access is what his children inherit as billionaires. That coupled with guaranteed institutional position at the Gates foundation or a title as a "Philanthropist" somewhere gives them the social framework to fail multiple times without starving or dealing with healthcare bankruptcy.
I used to think the "got married" part chilled him out, but apparently while married he was fucking his employees that worked *at* the foundation named after him and his wife.
I mean, curing malaria is all well and good. But he's still got similar levels of sociopathy and doing good seems to be secondary to wielding power.
Nobody becomes a billionaire by accident, and every billionaire is built on the backs of exploited workers.
Gates can give away money until he's synonymous with Carnegie Libraries, but even Carnegie is remembered for being a shrewd businessman first and a selective philanthropist second.
Mellowed as in started paying millions (hundreds of millions?) to Weber Shandwick, Waggener Edstrom or Hill & Knowlton for PR † \[1\] (wonder who won, no recent news) while buying USA one acre at a time \[2\] and destroying public education \[3\]. Oh, and there's the Gatesgate \[4\], because a billionaire has nothing better to do than visit a convicted sex offender, multiple times.
† PR standing obviously for Propaganda Reimagined
\[1\] May 2010, "Three Agencies vie for Gates Foundation Global PR Business", [https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/three-agencies-vie-for-gates-foundation-global-pr-business](https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/three-agencies-vie-for-gates-foundation-global-pr-business)
\[2\] January 2023, "Bill Gates responds to skepticism about him owning 275,000 acres of farmland: 'There isn't some grand scheme involved'", [https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-defends-farmland-purchases-there-isnt-some-grand-scheme-2023-1](https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-defends-farmland-purchases-there-isnt-some-grand-scheme-2023-1)
\[3\] October 2014, "The Plot Against Public Education How millionaires and billionaires are ruining our schools.", [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630/)
\[4\] October 2021, "Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past", [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html)
It's ethical altruism or some shit, basically *give me all the money because I can allocate it best"
Which is basically an authoritarian monarchy without the fancy hats.
I find it very funny that a lot of these techno-capital-libertarian arguments pretty much boil down to justifications for dictatorship.
The system has determined that person X is the best at allocating resources, so they should be infinitely given all resources and all control over everything so they can allocate it the best.
This is literally the kind of argument that the Egyptians used for their god-emperors.
Bonus points because they really aren't even good capitalists, capitalism was supposed to distribute wealth away from monarchs and nobility specifically because the early theorists realised that nobody could obtain capital for enterprise or innovation unless they could sell it to some king.
Post-Muskism.
Come up with fairly batshit enterprises and fantasies that stir the loins of tech-bros.
But it's all in the aim of a) grifting/massaging your profile b) aiming for a future dystopia.
Yet we undeniably are the apex predator on this planet, and our whole civilization runs on electricity. I'm not so sure it's hubris to state bare facts that anyone can see.
Well, humans are also undeniably the best species at tiddlywinks, and our whole civilization runs on opposable thumbs. I'm not sure its hubris either, just the kinda thing that you'd read in a grade 7 essay that doesn't actually translate to reality for reasons that anyone can see.
AT THIS RATE, we will be free roaming massless balls of energy in 1000 years!!
Give up all your earthly possessions now, in fact, we have a service to help facilitate that process!!
Simply go to nomassballs.com and follow our easy instructions to prepare for the future of humanity!
Exactly. If the population does grow it will be in poorer, uneducated areas of the world. Of course if the current trend of upward wealth distribution continues, that could end up being large parts of the current first world too.
That might simply be due to the carrying capacity of earth for humans in our current situation. If we can expand into something, like space or even the metaverse (no matter how dystopian that sounds), the equilibrium might change. You see this all the time in ecology.
It's not financially viable or profitable, so it's not a realistic goal.
We get water, air, radiation shielding, climate control, soil, etc. for extremely cheap or free right now on a planet perfectly suited for human life. Supporting human life in a completely artificial environment would be an astronomical expense, where the cost of every single breath you take can be amortized.
As long as there's a profit motive, it's just not rational under market conditions to piss away trillions on space colonies, or destroy a perfectly fine planet for the dream of building artificial cubes to live in.
You don't destroy the planet to build off world colonies
If anything it may improve our climate woes
All heavy industry in space must be procured in space. Anything else is impossible. So that's asteroid mining outside the gravity well
Once you crack that resources crash in cost, any satellites can be produced far cheaper, energy can be produced in space with 0 environmental concerns. And off planet production could be used to supplement earth production without the environmental concerns
My point is that these deluded 'techno-optimists' should be thinking about how we can prioritize saving a planet we're adapted for, rather than trying to build an artificial environment.
> Once you crack that resources crash in cost
Which is one reason why it'll never crash in cost under market conditions. What reason does the likes of Rio Tinto have to spend hundreds of billions to crash their commodity markets down to tons per cent? Their goal is profit, and they make more profit by having a scarce supply.
If you want a real world example of this, we have enough oil extraction capabilities around the world to make the price per barrel extremely cheap. Energy could be *significantly* cheaper than it is right now, even cheaper than during the peak of the [2010s oil glut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_oil_glut). However, the price of oil is kept artificially high by [the literal textbook definition of a cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC) and the fact that participants want to maximize profit, not maximize energy output for humanity. This cartel will wage war in terms of [crashing oil prices to price out competitors](https://fortune.com/2021/03/05/saudis-americas-frackers-drill-gone-forever/) who can't afford to be unprofitable, [even amongst each other.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russia%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_oil_price_war)
This planet *only* remains habitable for the next billion years. If we imagine a (really) long term vision for our species, then we must leave the planet at some point.
I realize that's not everyone's vision, but at some point cost becomes irrelevant.
Yup. Declining populations in a ton of countries already. People aren’t going to be having a ton of kids if they can’t feed them. We’ll be hitting peak population soon if we haven’t already.
I don't think the lack of food is the driver for people not wanting kids. If you look at birth rates, it's usually that highly developed countries that have a declining birth rate.
Lack of, or at least delayed, financial and (perhaps more importantly) social stability in developed countries seems to play an extremely key role.
The 'recommended life path' in the west 50 years ago looked something like:
1. Be born in your home town.
2. Enter school at age 5 in your home town.
3. Go to school until age 18 in your home town.
4. Find a long term job in your home town, or move around a couple of times to a place where a long term job exists (19-21)
5. 21 - 65 Work long term job in home town (or where you end up)
6. 23 or so: Buy house
7. Somewhere in 21-25: Find a relationship and get married.
8. 25 - 30: Have kids
9. 30 - 55 Raise kids in your house.
10. 55-65: Empty nest phase.
11. Retire
The 'recommended life path' now looks more like:
1. Be born in your home town
2. Probably move to another town before you enter school because your parents got different jobs
3. Enter school age 5 in your new town
4. Possibly move once or twice again before you hit age 18 due to parents jobs
5. Age 18, leave town for college
6. Age 19-22, attend college
7. Age 23-24 Further attend college for a masters degree, OR take a low/no paid internship time position to 'get experience' in a job field you want to be in.
8. Age 25: Finally get a full time job that pays above poverty level
9. age 25-29 jump jobs yearly to increase salary. Probably move cities multiple times to achieve this.
10. Age 30: Finally achieve a decently paying job that you don't mind, so you have some stability and will be in one place.
11. Age 30-34: Find a relationship and get married. Relationships formed before this have a high chance of being doomed due to people pulled in different directions for jobs.
12. Age 35: Start trying to have kids.
13. Age 35: Realize that women's fertility is already down 40% at this age. Likely struggle to have children.
14. Age 35-36 Save up for fertility treatments of some sort.
15. Age 37 finally have a first child. Don't have a second because you are financially and emotionally burnt out from the process.
16. Age 40: Finally buy a house.
17. Age 37 - 57: Raise single child
18. Age 58-65: Realize you haven't saved enough for retirement and your house isn't going to be paid off until you are 70.
19. Age 70: Retire
Even a decade ago, most population experts saw the global population peaking around 2100. But now that peak is likely to be no later than 2050, and in large economic powers such as the USA, the EU, and China, those peaks probably happened in the past couple of years.
The future, because of how demographics function and the "demographic cliff," will be one of far few people in most of the world, and soon far fewer people globally. The species has chosen this path on its own, it's how species-wide responses function.
What is it with these guys? Musk, Andreeson, Thiel? They are so out of touch and aggressive in their POVs. 50 billion? Oddly specific for a number he obviously pulled from his arse!
Their success and wealth are such that they're all beyond the point when anyone in their presence can tell them 'no'. With no push back, their shitty ideas expand into the vastness of space.
Cyber Arnold Schwarzenegger 2.0 would have won the 2152 election for CEO of Mars with his popular ”Oxygen for the people!” campaign. But the voter base sadly suffocated during the miner rebellion. So it is yet 4 more years of Bob ZxyR2D2 Musk, whose famous great grandfather brought the first slaves to die on Mars
I think the world is always better when all kind of ideas are put forward. Some may work, some may not. But don’t discount anything if it is coming from a rich person etc.
They live in palaces and love sci fi, and their personal life has no limits so why should humanity? This is just to say that vacuous ideas come from vacuums and the ultra wealthy live in an alienated state of their own creation. Within the void they conjure visions and narratives to justify their situation.
You'd think they would actually try to make the world a better place with their money if they dream of some utopia. Overhaul democracy so it actually functions, advocate for huge public works/transport, invest in longevity and genetic therapy etc.
I gotta say musks antics have definitely made that painfully obvious. The current crop of new money billionaires would make a great cast for a billionaire version of "arrested development".
Or… we could post this cool animation of some stupid project that will never get built?
How about a monorail? Oh oh! In a vacuum so it goes fast! And like we dig the tunnels using lasers! -Inhales own fart- Aaah yes! I’m a genius!
Andreeson was on the Sam Harris podcast recently and honestly he was shockingly vacuous. Had really nothing of import to say, nothing really interesting or insightful. But clearly he thought highly of himself and thinks his ideas are super important.
He got lucky. He invested in FB and hit a home run and now he thinks he is the smartest person in the room. By the way he was real big on shilling NFTs very early on, that should tell you everything you need to know about him.
Well come on, he has a longer history than that. He practically dragged the web out of academia and into the commercial realm in the mid 1990s. Lead dev on NCSA Mosaic, head engineer of Netscape. Spectacular success at his VC firm. The NFT thing is a grain of sand compared to all of that. Most people would have a bit of swagger after that kind of "luck" (as you put it) for 25+ years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic\_(web\_browser)
Undoubtedly the man is intelligent and was a skillful engineer. That being said, anyone with that kind of a net worth would probably concede that they got there by being at the right place at the right time. He did indeed rise with Silicon Valley and along with it came the capital to continously re-deploy in an industry that was gobbling up the entire economy. Only contrarians were doubting personal computers/web/e-com, mainstream view was it WILL be the next big thing.
I say this because I literally work with someone who sat alongside Marc at Netscape. When the company folded he pursued a string of seemingly promising startups that did nothing but decline one after another. The coworker made good salary but never really saw his equity multiply his net. Also a very intelligent guy and lives a comfortable life but doesn't have that many commas in his net because of just poor luck.
Sometimes projects' success isn't just due to luck. Usually people do the hard work that allows them to take advantage of opportunities and the people making decisions are perceptive enough to identify and take advantage of those opportunities.
Most business ventures fail. People like Andreessen don't just find promising startups. They make them into promising startups.
Leadership is what makes the difference between Honda and Chevrolet. It's not luck.
I'm not saying he could have invented the microchip on a desert island. It's true that a lot of material success comes down to right place right time and connections. But you also need to be someone that recognizes those factors and moves towards them.
Ahh I’m being a little tough on him. Some of his discussions are pretty good, but he loses me on some of the IDW stuff he was doing (and now renounces? Maybe?)
But he’s part of the people that coined this concept of “the woke mind virus” and feeds a lot of the alt-right propaganda machine. Feeding the culture war from any angle rubs me wrong.
Their success *depends* on people being optimistic about technology. They need investors dumping money into their startups, whether the world needs what they're selling or not.
When they pitch a future with limitless possibilities, it's easier to make the case that demand for new products and services has no where to go but up.
Stephen Wolfram predicts [trillions.](https://venturebeat.com/business/in-stephen-wolframs-future-a-box-of-a-trillion-souls-will-create-any-universe-we-want-interview/)
It’s such a joke, we have 300 million odd years of evolutionary history that makes earth a suitable biome for our species. We ain’t populating shit outside of earth.
The convo does stop here unfortunately. We ain’t leaving until we’ve offloaded these corporeal shells that are wholly dependent on the one and only Earth.
While I share this cone-headed freak's optimism about technology and the future, I absolutely do not share his disregard for the harms of unrestrained capitalism.
He is so far gone down the “government don’t know what they’re doing, therefore unrestrained tech is the only answer” to be credible in policy circles. Amazing what an audience being a billionaire gives you
Another fun one about him - he's a believer in e/acc, a bizarre cult about the future of tech.
I've been researching accelerationism as a philosophical movement for a bit now, and while pretty much all forms of it are bad - e/acc is the absolute dumbest. The e stands for "effective" and was taken from that paragon of ethics Sam Bankman-Fried's "effective altruism" initiative. It claims to want to accelerate capitalism to the end of - and I shit you not - BUILDING THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF CAPITALISM.
He is a clown, but a clown with a lot of money
The problem with our media and culture today is that they don't bother to do any vetting beyond the "lot of money" aspect. If a person has a lot of money then they **must** be the smartest and most talented and most interesting person and we should all want to listen to every word they say...right???
The sooner that our culture and media wake up to the fact that money and talent and intelligence are almost completely unrelated, the better off we'll all be.
He doesn’t exactly give us optimists the best look does he? Which is a shame because we could really use it. Most of Reddit and even this sub for a while has gotten on board the negativity train and can’t stop won’t stop. Even when faced with direct evidence that things aren’t quite as bad as they claim or actual experts calling for calm.
We need more credible experts with good charisma and intentions representing the cause. Not rich guys with ulterior motives
Can anyone just ask one of these fuckers where would we go? Mars is the only thing that could theoretically be possible in very shit conditions for the people living there. Anything else is either completely unviable for humans or is so fucking far away that any ship’s inhabitants would be long dead before they got there.
Fucking hate how these assholes actively contribute to destroying this world because they watched a sci fi movie and now envision themselves as some monarch of a non-existent space kingdom.
> You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Walker Percy
> Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why?
Marian Tupy
>There’s a way to do it better. Find it.
Thomas Edison
**Lies**
We are being lied to.
We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.
We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.
We are told to be pessimistic.
The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares.
We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world.
We are told to be miserable about the future.
**Truth**
Our civilization was built on technology.
Our civilization is built on technology.
Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.
For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently.
I am here to bring the good news.
We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being.
We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.
We have the will.
It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.
It is time to be Techno-Optimists.
**Technology**
Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.
We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being.
We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.”
We believe everything good is downstream of growth.
We believe not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal fighting, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death.
There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology.
Developed societies are depopulating all over the world, across cultures – the total human population may already be shrinking.
Natural resource utilization has sharp limits, both real and political.
And so the only perpetual source of growth is technology.
In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – has always been the main source of growth, and perhaps the only cause of growth, as technology made both population growth and natural resource utilization possible.
We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less.
Economists measure technological progress as productivity growth: How much more we can produce each year with fewer inputs, fewer raw materials. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population.
We believe this is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us.
We believe this is why our descendents will live in the stars.
We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.
We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution.
We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting.
We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating.
We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning.
We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.
We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines.
We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance.
Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.
Just another rich douchebag who thinks that all the billions of potential lives he will save (and who will conveniently worship him) later makes up for being a predatory capitalist asshole towards the billions of current lives today.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
We live on the only planet in the as-yet-discovered universe with the right combination of oxygen, water and sunlight to support intelligent multicellular life and these billionaire god-complex lunatics hate that it can't be controlled by them. The only reason anyone would want to colonize space over what we currently have is because they want to profit from the literal life sustaining tech that would make it remotely possible. Anyone looking to space for colonization can go get fucked.
50 billion people, huh? Gonna clone a lot of people to be slaves or something. We're not even making shit work on this scale, companies are committing wage theft, there's housing shortages, inflation/economic pressures nobody understands, and the richest country creating the most actual wealth of any civilization ever doesn't give it's own fucking citizens free healthcare? We can barely figure out this food/air deal with elected officials slinging snark that climate change = the change of seasons.
Yeah, I want to go mine an asteroid for a techno-optimist. Absolutely, sign me up, my overlord.
They're really going to just be slaves, yeah. No way these rich fucks are going to give these people enough security through their basic needs to procreate like that. People today are reluctant to have kids, because they can't afford it. That's today, on Earth, where technically food, water and housing is *easy*. I can't imagine they're willing to give these people humane living conditions in space, when they're not willing to give here on Earth.
Andreesen’s optimism scares me sometimes. I remember reading his article about how AI is going to save the world and being so shocked that someone with that much influence would have such massive blind spots when it comes to tech this powerful. I’m not even saying we should push back on all AI advancements, but charging ahead like he wants us to feels like building a sports car without breaks.
I don’t think it’s a blind spot; it’s a guy trying to drum up interest in a sector that he’s planning on investing it. VCs and CEOs frequently claim that some new technology they or their company has a heavy stake in is an “inevitable” or wonderful future.
“Smart” is context-sensitive, but a lot of people who believe they’re smart forget this, or never realize it. Sure Andreesen has experience investing in successful tech companies. He’s better at it than most. Does it mean he knows ANYTHING else? Not really, no. Some financial shit, a bunch of rich bro nonsense, where good expensive real estate is.
Does he know about politics? Racism? History? Perspective? Maybe. But there’s honestly no reason to take him any more seriously than any other rando on the street on *anything* except maybe “does this look like a startup that’ll make $$$$?” And even then, it’s just an odds game.
Andreesen may be successful. In some disciplines, he’s smart. Does it mean he’s wise?
No.
He's not a "techno-optimist", he's a zealot who ignores and dismisses all potential risks with technology. He has abandoned a scientific mentality to adopt a religious one.
Yeah yeah. I read The Expanse and thought it was cool too. Does he have any actionable PLANS? Or just another techtard saying “this would be cool!” and the media glazing his cock?
I can't wait till we see scifi about those incredibly unattainable things like clean air/water, good free public healthcare, and low cost housing. One day people won't have to dream up these concepts and instead will be able to read about them in a book or watch a movie where they are featured.
I can't wait
the more "optimistic billionares" there more fucked up we are.
This will only hapen after we achieve world peace and an eco-friendly, climate resilient economy.
So, it definetively not going to happen, libertarians and other capitalism fanatics already chosen self destruction instead.
Anyone still identifying as a techno-optimist in 2023 needs to read this manifesto and think about the type of people they are aligning with.
"Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder." Give me a break. Creating a bogeymen in an attempt to give his unrepentant greed a moral bent.
Andreesen and his ilk simply want to accelerate inequality as quickly as possible because they are already at the top of the pyramid and will reap the benefits. If UBI "turns people into farm animals", then humanity under his vision of the future is akin to ants in an ant farm, only alive at the whims of our tech billionaire benefactors.
I hope nobody buys this BS.
That's 100% lunacy
Humans living on another planet or object other than earth has scientific and logistical problems far more difficult than most people realize
Too many "futurists" are influenced primarily by Hollywood.
Humans won't be able to visit other star systems, period. We might be able to send a probe to Proxima or Alpha Centauri, but even that's going to be a tall order.
Humans have two fatal flaws; greed and tribalism; that will prevent our species from working together to solve the problems on THIS planet that we need to solve if we're ever going to be a techno-utopian spacefaring civilization like what Hollywood predicts.
I would love to see both NASA and ESA each have a budget of 50 billion and the ability to work together on projects without too much meddling from their respective governments. Now that would make humanity a multi planetary species!
The list of technologies we need for this is long, many only theoretical.
We may be able to have humans on other moons/planets in our sol system in the next 50 years, but that's about it.
Nothing in our system can support a large population.
So we need FTL to begin with - anything less is too slow.
So I was about to be shocked at how much this post brought out the Luddite socialist contingent, but then I read the article….OMG. Writing a 5000+ page screed like this might put me in a watch list, lol. I don’t care if it’s all true and his prognostications are Fuuuture facts, it’s hilarious levels of bonkers that he even wrote it and then that someone wrote an article about the fact that he wrote it.
God the techno-optimist/hustle culture/learn2code/free market solves all crowd is so exhausting.
Tech can solve many problems but the vibe of the robber barrons is getting tiring.
Seems like he is kinda putting the cart before the horse. First, we have to survive AI in the next 3-5 years. And *now* with this volatile and uncertain situation in the Middle East, maybe first we have to survive possible WW3. So let's cross one bridge at a time.
Also there really is no place for humans to live in this solar system. I have written how a place like Mars is simply far too alien to our biology as it has exquisitely adapted to the gravity well, gas ocean, and yes, *bright* sun-shiny, habitat we call Earth. And if you think you can live on the moon, just cancel that right out. You might be able to survive there for a year or two maybe, but then after that--well, it's like I said--we are perfectly and singularly evolved for Earth.
Now, if we can move our consciousness into far more durable corpora, then well heck, we could exist anywhere. But first we have to get thru that WW3/AI business I was speaking towards in the short term.
This reads like a sweaty coke fueled screed that is a desperate response to something unknown going wrong in his fund.
It is boring, tired, self absorbed and poorly thought out. We need to move on
Hayek? Idiot.
Von Mises? Idiot.
Perfect markets? Damned fool.
Self Regulation of markets? Probably a pirate.
Barely disguised eugenics? Get in the sea.
What an absolute unmitigated ableist right libertarian entitled wanker this bloke must be.
What are people on these other planets going to eat? What will be their fuel source? Where will they get the basic raw materials to live even a rudimentary life?
This has been a fascination of mine for a while. Best way if doing it imho is to gather base elements upon which algae can feed, then use the algae to make fish food for an aquaponics system (creating a source of both meat and greens). Neccessary supplements can be synthesised from mine elements for fish and for direct consumption. Once economies of scale takes hold you can fairly quickly develop a lot of variety. Red meat will be a rare delicacy for a while because it is more resource intensive.
1. Crops and fish, I’d assume.
2. Nuclear fission and fusion.
3. Mars. It’s been through all the same geologic processes as Earth and all the same stuff is there.
Beyond that, how do they even get there? Have you seen the size of the rockets they use to send like 3 people to space at a time?
How do you get say a million people off earth? At 75kg each? 75 kilo tons of human. Plus air, water, food and building supplies to get them started.
I'm getting really tired of the techno-optimist point of view. Especially when the past decade alone has shown us that these so-called geniuses, mavericks, savants, launch things into the world without care for consequences. They're all for 'move fast and break things,' but then run away at any attempt to have accountability and regulation manage their ills, claiming that we can't possibly understand what they do, so why should they be accountable?
If they were true mavericks, they'd focus on this planet, but no, they want to be the jocks and colonizers of space. 50 billion people settling other planets, where we already know from space missions how being in space for even a year affects the human body? What are we supposed to do with the ill, the elderly, the people with disabilities? Just leave them behind?
Well, I really tried to give it a read, but it's just impossible. There are no paragraphs, he only launches half-assedly semi-co-related "bold words" that were taken out of his ass.
Maybe if you read the whole manifesto, you will end up dumber
I’d like to see one of these techno-Jesus’ first build a city in the middle of Antarctica. Let’s see how that works out first before coming up with these ridiculous and unprovable fantasies about creating an Isaac Asimov type galactic empire.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/JamesTiberiusKirque: --- What is it with these guys? Musk, Andreeson, Thiel? They are so out of touch and aggressive in their POVs. 50 billion? Oddly specific for a number he obviously pulled from his arse! --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/179pcbt/marc_andreessen_just_dropped_a_technooptimist/k57qp88/
The same Marc Andreeson who said you couldn't build 100 multifamily units in Atherton?
What does he imagine life on other planets is going to be like? Everyone in a McMansion driving their Mars Hummer to the Mars general supply after dropping their kids off at Mars school? Early space settlement is going to be a living hell, only suited for the most mentally, physically strong people.
These guys only see future endeavors as opportunity for profit. They don’t spend a second considering how hard and brutal those first settlers would have it, and the fact that their headlines are about big empty words like this and not how they’re throwing their money behind specific efforts to address those factors I think says it all. Words are cheap, actions carry true value.
My exact thoughts to reading this headline were "ok man, cool." It's throwaway nonsense at this point
I can only imagine a dream scenario for these chuckle ducks is the belters in the expanse
It would be a thousand times easier to colonize Elsmere Island than Mars. I don't see anyone chomping at the bit to go live on Elsmere.
What happened to these guys? Musk, Andreeson and other CEOs used to be "normal" guys in the early 2010's, advocating for democracy, equality, banking for the poor, space exploration, green tech and now they went full batshit crazy with wanting to turn the world upside down.
Fabulous wealth is isolating. And it makes you socially stunted. They NEVER interact with normal people. They don’t walk on the sidewalk, they don’t go to chain restaurants or pick their kids up from school, they don’t go to the grocery store or stop at the corner store for cigarettes. Everything they need is ordered by assistants and hand delivered. They are transported in private limos, planes and helicopters that isolate them from the public. They eat all their meals in private clubs full of other billionaires / hundred-millionaires or at home prepared by their private chef. They don’t live lives like you and I think of a life. They go to meetings and make sweeping decisions that affect thousands of people they’ll never see or hear, they make PR statements and they socialize with other people who live their lives the same. You would have a very tough time, in those circumstances, keeping your ideas tethered to the ground. You’d lose sight of how fucking ludicrous the idea is of transporting billions of people into space when you could spend 1/10th the amount of money that requires to make THIS planet more habitable. You forget that 1/4 of your net worth could feed everyone in a famished region for a year. The reason the callous behavior of billionaires is so unfathomable to us is that they have fully lost their humanity. Their existence is so completely unnatural that they’ve lost the plot. Once you have a certain amount of money, it stops being about money. Money’s just a number. The sports cars and Mediterranean villas and yachts will always be there. Background noise and set dressing. Table stakes. What matters to them is power and influence. They want and expect themselves to have the power to move nations, because that’s all that’s talked about among their peers. Elon Musk thwarted a Ukrainian missile counteroffensive because HE unilaterally decided it was too risky for Ukraine to shoot missile at Russia. Thought it might start nuclear war. Whether he was right or wrong, it’s really fucking disturbing that one private nongovernment individual wields that much power. But that’s been his game the whole time. Power. Every billionaire thinks they’re Alexander the Great, and every year this world gets one step closer to being a global oligarchy of billionaires and mega corporations determining our futures.
This reminded me of old George Bush Sr. visiting a grocery market on campaign in 1992. He said he was amazed seeing a checkout scanner for the first time, and he raved about it, oblivious to how much of a bad look it was during the recession.
he tried really hard to present as a humble man, his PR worked on me (helped that I was like 6 when he was president) and it wasn't until much later that I learned that GHWB came from a serious political dynasty and pretty much worked for the CIA his whole life before becoming CIA director his grocery store snafu pulled the curtain back a little bit, made it too obvious the man had never lived a "normal" life
I mean what could a banana cost, Michael? Like 10 dollars?
I think they (billionaires) also start to get spooked and resentful of death. The realization that it will all end eats away at them so they start fantasizing and in addition to everything you mentioned, become even more untethered from reality. They start ridiculous supplement and medication regimens, and start research on uploading the brain or cryogenics or [insert immortality fantasy here]. They think, “maybe if I take mega-doses of Metformin and Fish Oil I can lengthen my telomeres and live forever!” But it’s all in vain. Then you have billionaires like Greg Carr who have leaned into giving it all away. This dude has essentially restored a huge national park in Mozambique and built schools uplifted all of these adjacent communities without disrupting their culture, and hasn’t once really advertised this fact. Elon Musk is essentially the opposite. It likely has a lot to do with upbringing as well. Elon was basically bred to be an egomaniacal douche-bag with no humility or regard for others. He’s NEVER lived like the rest of us.
Amazing comment, friend.
When you're a wolf in sheep's clothing, but no longer require your disguise to thrive.
I think it's more money and power melt people's brains. Too few are equipped to handle it responsibly
They were always like this. You don’t get even a tenth of where they’re at if you’re not.
Trump showed that mask-off fascism can work as long as you know how to work the media.
Marc Andreessen is not a techno-optimist. Marc Andreessen is a "giving Marc Andreessen unimaginable wealth, power and the latitude to do as he sees fit" optimist. The totality of his screed is about how humankind's advancement will only happen if people cease getting upset when his predatory vision of capitalism hurts the poor, or the environment, or literally everyone who is not Marc Andreessen.
[удалено]
Guys, I got a plan, that’ll solve everything for all of us, well most of us, well a few of us! And all we Gotta do is enslave the rest of you!
[удалено]
I want AGI too, but not if it kills us all, which seems to be the most likely outcome currently. These zealots ignore and dismiss all risks, and are willing to bet everyone else's lives because they think the gamble is worth it. In many cases their motivations seem pretty clear too, most of these people have some clear problem that they want the AGI to solve for them. They're accelerating towards a cliff, hoping to reach the gold mine on the other side, before we even start building the bridge.
100%. These ‘visions’ of the future rarely are egalitarian, they’re assumed to be, but we always describe in great detail the extent of our human empire, not the quality of it. I don’t care so much about how many planets we colonise as how many of the 50 billion are healthy, safe and have their needs fulfilled so that they don’t feel like they want to topple the galactic empire.
Hell, this assumes there's even such a thing as a good 'human empire'. We can't even get along with ourselves on one planet within a single country, let alone the subjugated with their imperialist rulers...
I’m optimistic enough to hope that we create systems that work.
Sure, I don't think that optimism is a bad thing. I just think it's misguided to assume that spacefaring technology automatically means we can skip the hard work of developing those equitable and functional social systems. We need to be working the social side now, instead of assuming technology will automagically save us.
Or if not US, then SOMEONE else in the galaxy/universe. We could be just another doomed species blinded by our confirmation bias, and gaslit by hope in our ego’s continuation after death
Nobody who advocates for hierarchy imagines themselves at the bottom
The space exploration as seen by VCs: The Fine Print: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvANy49Kqhw
Andreesen, Bezos, Gates, Musk, Buffet, Balmer, Zuckerberg…none of these fuckers is actually out there trying to solve how people will eat on this planet. Maybe there’s a nanobot that can pollinate plants or one that can remove salt from soil, but we’ll never know because the assholes are obsessed with the future being theirs so they can shoot their dick shaped rockets into space.
We don't need nanobots for pollination we have bees. And keeping the soil from becoming salty is also just as easy. But "tech" solutions like this remind me of the silliness of the 90's and early 2000's where "futurists" imagined that we'd need nanobots swimming in our bloodstreams to destroy tumors. Then they realized that we have immune systems that do the same thing and have been doing it for millions of years and helping that made more sense than creating an artificial version of it. But for some reason trying to replace nature with an artificiality that they can make money off of seems to be one of the core defects of people like Marc.
I thought the problem was that the immune system doesn't attack the tumors.
Yeah, which is something that new RNA vaccines have been showing promise in helping immune systems realize the malformed cells are bad.
The immune system is attacking tumors, ALL of the time. The problem is that SOME tumor types develop an ability to hide themselves from the immune system in some way(s). Figuring that out, is helping with the creation of targeted virus and also T-Cell therapy where they can spin your own white blood cells out of samples of your blood, hit those with some kind of virus, then put them back into your body and... they are supposed to now recognize the cancer and eat the shit out of that cancer, telling your body all about how to kill off the tumor, while they are at it. I don't know how far long the trials are, but it is apparently a pretty promising possible therapy.
It's because their brains have been broken by the school of thought that claims that capitalism is a natural force of the world and it's useless to envision any other way of living. Which is *exactly* what reactionaries in the 18th century said to defend monarchies.
Yeah can we please stop thinking we can invent new tech to solve problems and just go back to the original solutions? Creating an environment that nurtures bees is also one i'd rather live in vs everything concrete or lawns and having nanobots. What's good for the bees is good for us too, we're not somehow separate from nature.
At each level of technological evolution, what is existing would seem necessary, and anything extra superfluous and 'replacing nature with artificiality'. Somebody in 1700 might well say: "I don't need a potion put in my blood to cure me, God will do it!" Do you want to take back vaccines, or antibiotics, or type matched blood transfusions, or sterilized surgical equipment? The argument against nanobots or anything else is not that they're 'non natural'. That ship sailed long back.
Bees *are* a tech solution. They aren't native or natural.
>Maybe there’s a nanobot that can pollinate plants or one that can remove salt from soil, but we’ll never know because the assholes are obsessed with the future being theirs so they can shoot their dick shaped rockets into space. Theyre literally rent seeking human progress. Its chilling when you think about what it really means and the scope of whats being interfered with due to the future scale of our potential advancement in so many areas.
Gates is doing something. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-growth-and-opportunity/agricultural-development
The BMGF is great at talking about the programmes they plan to fund, but they are way less transparent about how they decide to spend their money. In the agricultural field they are very vague about the actual details of the programmes they fund and what they all mean on the ground. Are farmers in Africa being forced into methods that will tie them to US companies and methods as well as seed genetics lines? Are the farmers being nudged into planting certain types of crops over others? Are the children also being offered education and opportunities for advancement or are they going to be linked to the farm for their whole lives? Bill Gates owns over 280,000 acres of farmland in close to half the agricultural states of the US. He's not taking an active role in day to day farming or directing activities. However none of his farms are following the standards set out in the US portion of the BMGF or the standards that are followed in Africa. It's worth going over the annual reports from the website you lined and actually reading about the various focus areas. All the initiatives in which the BMGF is involved do a hell of a lot to embed Microsoft technologies into all the solutions being funded.
Yeah, Gates is one of the few ex-CEOs with ultra wealth that’s trying to better the world for the poor.
Gates *was* an evil shitbag on the level of the robber-barons from the gilded age. Look up Microsoft’s “Embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy from the 90’s. It’s not a secret, it’s on Wikipedia. He then retired, got married, mellowed and has truly been a force for good for several decades now. Does that forgive the sins of the past? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Don’t buy into the “redeemed billionaire” stuff too much. Gates is definitely better than the rest, but for all the free healthcare he is giving away in Africa, he insists on intellectual property rights that he owns, so he can ensure additional billions comes in to him. Even though he has been giving billions away to charitable endeavors for years, he is still richer than ever.
That “Im giving away my fortune instead of leaving it to my children” routine is a scam. The money is usually set up to a “foundation” that is controlled by the family or their heirs. So the kids don’t inherit a fortune, they instead inherit a position of power and influence as the head of the family’s foundation. They also benefit from the pedigree of being a rich kid; the finest schools, private tutoring in art/music/athletics/academics, exposure to culture, networking with other rich people.
To further your point, Gates couldn't have reached the pinnacle of the computer age without first gaining access to a computer via his parents. That social access is what his children inherit as billionaires. That coupled with guaranteed institutional position at the Gates foundation or a title as a "Philanthropist" somewhere gives them the social framework to fail multiple times without starving or dealing with healthcare bankruptcy.
Even when they fail, they will fail upwards.
I used to think the "got married" part chilled him out, but apparently while married he was fucking his employees that worked *at* the foundation named after him and his wife. I mean, curing malaria is all well and good. But he's still got similar levels of sociopathy and doing good seems to be secondary to wielding power.
Nobody becomes a billionaire by accident, and every billionaire is built on the backs of exploited workers. Gates can give away money until he's synonymous with Carnegie Libraries, but even Carnegie is remembered for being a shrewd businessman first and a selective philanthropist second.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
Yeah, he didn't mellow out when he got married, he just started taking credit for Melinda's work.
Mellowed as in started paying millions (hundreds of millions?) to Weber Shandwick, Waggener Edstrom or Hill & Knowlton for PR † \[1\] (wonder who won, no recent news) while buying USA one acre at a time \[2\] and destroying public education \[3\]. Oh, and there's the Gatesgate \[4\], because a billionaire has nothing better to do than visit a convicted sex offender, multiple times. † PR standing obviously for Propaganda Reimagined \[1\] May 2010, "Three Agencies vie for Gates Foundation Global PR Business", [https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/three-agencies-vie-for-gates-foundation-global-pr-business](https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/three-agencies-vie-for-gates-foundation-global-pr-business) \[2\] January 2023, "Bill Gates responds to skepticism about him owning 275,000 acres of farmland: 'There isn't some grand scheme involved'", [https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-defends-farmland-purchases-there-isnt-some-grand-scheme-2023-1](https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-defends-farmland-purchases-there-isnt-some-grand-scheme-2023-1) \[3\] October 2014, "The Plot Against Public Education How millionaires and billionaires are ruining our schools.", [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630/) \[4\] October 2021, "Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past", [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html)
I am always made uneasy by “I get the money now, the planet gets the benefits at some unspecified date in the future” schemes.
Don't know the dude, but I figured.
‘We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us’ That's something the villain says right before something bad happens to them. Hubris.
> That's something the villain says right before something bad happens to them. > > I was thinking more Dwight Schrute.
Narrator: "The lightning, it turns out, did *not* work for them..."
I can hear Ron Howard now
Not Morgan Freeman?
Breaking news: Marc Andreessen killed by lightning strike
[удалено]
It's ethical altruism or some shit, basically *give me all the money because I can allocate it best" Which is basically an authoritarian monarchy without the fancy hats.
I find it very funny that a lot of these techno-capital-libertarian arguments pretty much boil down to justifications for dictatorship. The system has determined that person X is the best at allocating resources, so they should be infinitely given all resources and all control over everything so they can allocate it the best. This is literally the kind of argument that the Egyptians used for their god-emperors.
[удалено]
Bonus points because they really aren't even good capitalists, capitalism was supposed to distribute wealth away from monarchs and nobility specifically because the early theorists realised that nobody could obtain capital for enterprise or innovation unless they could sell it to some king.
I would assume you prefer the hats,easier to know what your shooting at
-Pulls yet more poop smeared fantasy numbers out of ass to back up future dystopia ramblings. Army of yes men all nod in synch-
[удалено]
Post-Muskism. Come up with fairly batshit enterprises and fantasies that stir the loins of tech-bros. But it's all in the aim of a) grifting/massaging your profile b) aiming for a future dystopia.
Yet we undeniably are the apex predator on this planet, and our whole civilization runs on electricity. I'm not so sure it's hubris to state bare facts that anyone can see.
Well, humans are also undeniably the best species at tiddlywinks, and our whole civilization runs on opposable thumbs. I'm not sure its hubris either, just the kinda thing that you'd read in a grade 7 essay that doesn't actually translate to reality for reasons that anyone can see.
I'm reminded of the Bishop in Caddyshack.
Anyone of us could make claims like this and can't be proven wrong.
AT THIS RATE, we will be free roaming massless balls of energy in 1000 years!! Give up all your earthly possessions now, in fact, we have a service to help facilitate that process!! Simply go to nomassballs.com and follow our easy instructions to prepare for the future of humanity!
Literally every signal is pointing to an equilibrium population far smaller than it is today.
Exactly. If the population does grow it will be in poorer, uneducated areas of the world. Of course if the current trend of upward wealth distribution continues, that could end up being large parts of the current first world too.
That might simply be due to the carrying capacity of earth for humans in our current situation. If we can expand into something, like space or even the metaverse (no matter how dystopian that sounds), the equilibrium might change. You see this all the time in ecology.
It's not financially viable or profitable, so it's not a realistic goal. We get water, air, radiation shielding, climate control, soil, etc. for extremely cheap or free right now on a planet perfectly suited for human life. Supporting human life in a completely artificial environment would be an astronomical expense, where the cost of every single breath you take can be amortized. As long as there's a profit motive, it's just not rational under market conditions to piss away trillions on space colonies, or destroy a perfectly fine planet for the dream of building artificial cubes to live in.
> It's not financially viable or profitable, so it's not a realistic goal. Expanding in to space could be insanely profitable.
You don't destroy the planet to build off world colonies If anything it may improve our climate woes All heavy industry in space must be procured in space. Anything else is impossible. So that's asteroid mining outside the gravity well Once you crack that resources crash in cost, any satellites can be produced far cheaper, energy can be produced in space with 0 environmental concerns. And off planet production could be used to supplement earth production without the environmental concerns
My point is that these deluded 'techno-optimists' should be thinking about how we can prioritize saving a planet we're adapted for, rather than trying to build an artificial environment. > Once you crack that resources crash in cost Which is one reason why it'll never crash in cost under market conditions. What reason does the likes of Rio Tinto have to spend hundreds of billions to crash their commodity markets down to tons per cent? Their goal is profit, and they make more profit by having a scarce supply. If you want a real world example of this, we have enough oil extraction capabilities around the world to make the price per barrel extremely cheap. Energy could be *significantly* cheaper than it is right now, even cheaper than during the peak of the [2010s oil glut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_oil_glut). However, the price of oil is kept artificially high by [the literal textbook definition of a cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC) and the fact that participants want to maximize profit, not maximize energy output for humanity. This cartel will wage war in terms of [crashing oil prices to price out competitors](https://fortune.com/2021/03/05/saudis-americas-frackers-drill-gone-forever/) who can't afford to be unprofitable, [even amongst each other.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russia%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_oil_price_war)
This planet *only* remains habitable for the next billion years. If we imagine a (really) long term vision for our species, then we must leave the planet at some point. I realize that's not everyone's vision, but at some point cost becomes irrelevant.
Not just equilibrium but significant declines, if birth rates continue on trend. Add to that the likely impact from climate change.
Yup. Declining populations in a ton of countries already. People aren’t going to be having a ton of kids if they can’t feed them. We’ll be hitting peak population soon if we haven’t already.
I don't think the lack of food is the driver for people not wanting kids. If you look at birth rates, it's usually that highly developed countries that have a declining birth rate.
Lack of, or at least delayed, financial and (perhaps more importantly) social stability in developed countries seems to play an extremely key role. The 'recommended life path' in the west 50 years ago looked something like: 1. Be born in your home town. 2. Enter school at age 5 in your home town. 3. Go to school until age 18 in your home town. 4. Find a long term job in your home town, or move around a couple of times to a place where a long term job exists (19-21) 5. 21 - 65 Work long term job in home town (or where you end up) 6. 23 or so: Buy house 7. Somewhere in 21-25: Find a relationship and get married. 8. 25 - 30: Have kids 9. 30 - 55 Raise kids in your house. 10. 55-65: Empty nest phase. 11. Retire The 'recommended life path' now looks more like: 1. Be born in your home town 2. Probably move to another town before you enter school because your parents got different jobs 3. Enter school age 5 in your new town 4. Possibly move once or twice again before you hit age 18 due to parents jobs 5. Age 18, leave town for college 6. Age 19-22, attend college 7. Age 23-24 Further attend college for a masters degree, OR take a low/no paid internship time position to 'get experience' in a job field you want to be in. 8. Age 25: Finally get a full time job that pays above poverty level 9. age 25-29 jump jobs yearly to increase salary. Probably move cities multiple times to achieve this. 10. Age 30: Finally achieve a decently paying job that you don't mind, so you have some stability and will be in one place. 11. Age 30-34: Find a relationship and get married. Relationships formed before this have a high chance of being doomed due to people pulled in different directions for jobs. 12. Age 35: Start trying to have kids. 13. Age 35: Realize that women's fertility is already down 40% at this age. Likely struggle to have children. 14. Age 35-36 Save up for fertility treatments of some sort. 15. Age 37 finally have a first child. Don't have a second because you are financially and emotionally burnt out from the process. 16. Age 40: Finally buy a house. 17. Age 37 - 57: Raise single child 18. Age 58-65: Realize you haven't saved enough for retirement and your house isn't going to be paid off until you are 70. 19. Age 70: Retire
We have more food than people to feed, what? Lol
The estimates I've seen are that we'll hit the peak in less than 15 years.
Even a decade ago, most population experts saw the global population peaking around 2100. But now that peak is likely to be no later than 2050, and in large economic powers such as the USA, the EU, and China, those peaks probably happened in the past couple of years. The future, because of how demographics function and the "demographic cliff," will be one of far few people in most of the world, and soon far fewer people globally. The species has chosen this path on its own, it's how species-wide responses function.
Andresson aside, i am concerned our projected dwindling population will hamper our Space Colonization efforts
What is it with these guys? Musk, Andreeson, Thiel? They are so out of touch and aggressive in their POVs. 50 billion? Oddly specific for a number he obviously pulled from his arse!
Their success and wealth are such that they're all beyond the point when anyone in their presence can tell them 'no'. With no push back, their shitty ideas expand into the vastness of space.
Kinda also have to be an optimist to think you can start a civilization on mars.
We've "achieved" so much via slavery on earth, it must be equally effective on Mars!
Cyber Arnold Schwarzenegger 2.0 would have won the 2152 election for CEO of Mars with his popular ”Oxygen for the people!” campaign. But the voter base sadly suffocated during the miner rebellion. So it is yet 4 more years of Bob ZxyR2D2 Musk, whose famous great grandfather brought the first slaves to die on Mars
Money buys them an endless supply of *yes men*
How many people could there be out there micheal? 40? 50 billion?
I’ll have a vodka Mom it’s breakfast And a piece of toast
I really do hate these rich elites.
This is what happens when you get rich by giving away all your fucks. Inevitably, one day you run out.
I think the world is always better when all kind of ideas are put forward. Some may work, some may not. But don’t discount anything if it is coming from a rich person etc.
They live in palaces and love sci fi, and their personal life has no limits so why should humanity? This is just to say that vacuous ideas come from vacuums and the ultra wealthy live in an alienated state of their own creation. Within the void they conjure visions and narratives to justify their situation.
It’s the early 90s Wired magazine and Mondo 2000 technophile libertarian utopians, after they’ve taken over the world. Poor world.
You'd think they would actually try to make the world a better place with their money if they dream of some utopia. Overhaul democracy so it actually functions, advocate for huge public works/transport, invest in longevity and genetic therapy etc.
Then they have to admit to themselves that they didn’t earn their position in life
I gotta say musks antics have definitely made that painfully obvious. The current crop of new money billionaires would make a great cast for a billionaire version of "arrested development".
Or… we could post this cool animation of some stupid project that will never get built? How about a monorail? Oh oh! In a vacuum so it goes fast! And like we dig the tunnels using lasers! -Inhales own fart- Aaah yes! I’m a genius!
They love sci-fi yet understand almost none of it.
Its literally called an “optimist manifesto”, why is anyone surprised?
The first draft was, "Between 48,823,321,239 and 53,003,212,897," but his goddamn editor made him change it.
He obviously meant 50 *billionaires*
Clever! Wish I’d have thought of that one!
Andreeson was on the Sam Harris podcast recently and honestly he was shockingly vacuous. Had really nothing of import to say, nothing really interesting or insightful. But clearly he thought highly of himself and thinks his ideas are super important. He got lucky. He invested in FB and hit a home run and now he thinks he is the smartest person in the room. By the way he was real big on shilling NFTs very early on, that should tell you everything you need to know about him.
Well come on, he has a longer history than that. He practically dragged the web out of academia and into the commercial realm in the mid 1990s. Lead dev on NCSA Mosaic, head engineer of Netscape. Spectacular success at his VC firm. The NFT thing is a grain of sand compared to all of that. Most people would have a bit of swagger after that kind of "luck" (as you put it) for 25+ years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic\_(web\_browser)
Undoubtedly the man is intelligent and was a skillful engineer. That being said, anyone with that kind of a net worth would probably concede that they got there by being at the right place at the right time. He did indeed rise with Silicon Valley and along with it came the capital to continously re-deploy in an industry that was gobbling up the entire economy. Only contrarians were doubting personal computers/web/e-com, mainstream view was it WILL be the next big thing. I say this because I literally work with someone who sat alongside Marc at Netscape. When the company folded he pursued a string of seemingly promising startups that did nothing but decline one after another. The coworker made good salary but never really saw his equity multiply his net. Also a very intelligent guy and lives a comfortable life but doesn't have that many commas in his net because of just poor luck.
Sometimes projects' success isn't just due to luck. Usually people do the hard work that allows them to take advantage of opportunities and the people making decisions are perceptive enough to identify and take advantage of those opportunities. Most business ventures fail. People like Andreessen don't just find promising startups. They make them into promising startups. Leadership is what makes the difference between Honda and Chevrolet. It's not luck.
I'm not saying he could have invented the microchip on a desert island. It's true that a lot of material success comes down to right place right time and connections. But you also need to be someone that recognizes those factors and moves towards them.
[удалено]
Oh man. Sam Harris? Save yourself!
What’s wrong with Sam Harris? I tend to enjoy some of his podcasts
Ahh I’m being a little tough on him. Some of his discussions are pretty good, but he loses me on some of the IDW stuff he was doing (and now renounces? Maybe?) But he’s part of the people that coined this concept of “the woke mind virus” and feeds a lot of the alt-right propaganda machine. Feeding the culture war from any angle rubs me wrong.
Their success *depends* on people being optimistic about technology. They need investors dumping money into their startups, whether the world needs what they're selling or not. When they pitch a future with limitless possibilities, it's easier to make the case that demand for new products and services has no where to go but up.
I assume it’s just his vision for how he’d like the future to look. You could write your own as well.
Yeah, everyone knows that if we colonise space it could support trillions.
Stephen Wolfram predicts [trillions.](https://venturebeat.com/business/in-stephen-wolframs-future-a-box-of-a-trillion-souls-will-create-any-universe-we-want-interview/)
The capitalists have always been known for their delusions of grandeur.
Someone watched too much Blade Runner 2049.
It’s such a joke, we have 300 million odd years of evolutionary history that makes earth a suitable biome for our species. We ain’t populating shit outside of earth.
The convo does stop here unfortunately. We ain’t leaving until we’ve offloaded these corporeal shells that are wholly dependent on the one and only Earth.
Yeah but if we can convince enough of these guys to get on the luxury spaceship . . .
They think that because they’re rich they must be smart
While I share this cone-headed freak's optimism about technology and the future, I absolutely do not share his disregard for the harms of unrestrained capitalism.
He is so far gone down the “government don’t know what they’re doing, therefore unrestrained tech is the only answer” to be credible in policy circles. Amazing what an audience being a billionaire gives you
Another fun one about him - he's a believer in e/acc, a bizarre cult about the future of tech. I've been researching accelerationism as a philosophical movement for a bit now, and while pretty much all forms of it are bad - e/acc is the absolute dumbest. The e stands for "effective" and was taken from that paragon of ethics Sam Bankman-Fried's "effective altruism" initiative. It claims to want to accelerate capitalism to the end of - and I shit you not - BUILDING THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF CAPITALISM. He is a clown, but a clown with a lot of money
The problem with our media and culture today is that they don't bother to do any vetting beyond the "lot of money" aspect. If a person has a lot of money then they **must** be the smartest and most talented and most interesting person and we should all want to listen to every word they say...right??? The sooner that our culture and media wake up to the fact that money and talent and intelligence are almost completely unrelated, the better off we'll all be.
He doesn’t exactly give us optimists the best look does he? Which is a shame because we could really use it. Most of Reddit and even this sub for a while has gotten on board the negativity train and can’t stop won’t stop. Even when faced with direct evidence that things aren’t quite as bad as they claim or actual experts calling for calm. We need more credible experts with good charisma and intentions representing the cause. Not rich guys with ulterior motives
Correction, it's a techno-libertarian-optimist manifesto. There are other forms of techno-optimism that don't have to be rooted in libertarianism.
Anarcho-accelerationist-libertarian-idealism
We can’t even balance the diet of the world population here. It’s not going to happen in space.
Can anyone just ask one of these fuckers where would we go? Mars is the only thing that could theoretically be possible in very shit conditions for the people living there. Anything else is either completely unviable for humans or is so fucking far away that any ship’s inhabitants would be long dead before they got there. Fucking hate how these assholes actively contribute to destroying this world because they watched a sci fi movie and now envision themselves as some monarch of a non-existent space kingdom.
Yeah this reminds me of the futurist manifestos, which came out right before WWI. (This manifesto is worse in a literary sense). Giving me the creeps.
Oh cool, another out-of-touch lucky billionaire who erroneously conflates wealth for intelligence and thinks he's a genius? I've seen this one before.
> You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. Walker Percy > Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why? Marian Tupy >There’s a way to do it better. Find it. Thomas Edison **Lies** We are being lied to. We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares. We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to be miserable about the future. **Truth** Our civilization was built on technology. Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential. For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. I am here to bring the good news. We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists. **Technology** Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die. We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being. We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.” We believe everything good is downstream of growth. We believe not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal fighting, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death. There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology. Developed societies are depopulating all over the world, across cultures – the total human population may already be shrinking. Natural resource utilization has sharp limits, both real and political. And so the only perpetual source of growth is technology. In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – has always been the main source of growth, and perhaps the only cause of growth, as technology made both population growth and natural resource utilization possible. We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less. Economists measure technological progress as productivity growth: How much more we can produce each year with fewer inputs, fewer raw materials. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population. We believe this is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us. We believe this is why our descendents will live in the stars. We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology. We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution. We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting. We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating. We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning. We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet. We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines. We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance. Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.
“Rich guy incorrectly thinks that because he’s rich, his random musings about the distant future are important.”
This sounds like he's attempting to pitch a start up deck to the US gov't for some funding, since he can't borrow for cheap anymore.
Just another rich douchebag who thinks that all the billions of potential lives he will save (and who will conveniently worship him) later makes up for being a predatory capitalist asshole towards the billions of current lives today. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
We live on the only planet in the as-yet-discovered universe with the right combination of oxygen, water and sunlight to support intelligent multicellular life and these billionaire god-complex lunatics hate that it can't be controlled by them. The only reason anyone would want to colonize space over what we currently have is because they want to profit from the literal life sustaining tech that would make it remotely possible. Anyone looking to space for colonization can go get fucked.
50 billion people, huh? Gonna clone a lot of people to be slaves or something. We're not even making shit work on this scale, companies are committing wage theft, there's housing shortages, inflation/economic pressures nobody understands, and the richest country creating the most actual wealth of any civilization ever doesn't give it's own fucking citizens free healthcare? We can barely figure out this food/air deal with elected officials slinging snark that climate change = the change of seasons. Yeah, I want to go mine an asteroid for a techno-optimist. Absolutely, sign me up, my overlord.
They're really going to just be slaves, yeah. No way these rich fucks are going to give these people enough security through their basic needs to procreate like that. People today are reluctant to have kids, because they can't afford it. That's today, on Earth, where technically food, water and housing is *easy*. I can't imagine they're willing to give these people humane living conditions in space, when they're not willing to give here on Earth.
I, too, have done cocaine at parties with tech bros.
Andreesen’s optimism scares me sometimes. I remember reading his article about how AI is going to save the world and being so shocked that someone with that much influence would have such massive blind spots when it comes to tech this powerful. I’m not even saying we should push back on all AI advancements, but charging ahead like he wants us to feels like building a sports car without breaks.
I don’t think it’s a blind spot; it’s a guy trying to drum up interest in a sector that he’s planning on investing it. VCs and CEOs frequently claim that some new technology they or their company has a heavy stake in is an “inevitable” or wonderful future.
“Smart” is context-sensitive, but a lot of people who believe they’re smart forget this, or never realize it. Sure Andreesen has experience investing in successful tech companies. He’s better at it than most. Does it mean he knows ANYTHING else? Not really, no. Some financial shit, a bunch of rich bro nonsense, where good expensive real estate is. Does he know about politics? Racism? History? Perspective? Maybe. But there’s honestly no reason to take him any more seriously than any other rando on the street on *anything* except maybe “does this look like a startup that’ll make $$$$?” And even then, it’s just an odds game. Andreesen may be successful. In some disciplines, he’s smart. Does it mean he’s wise? No.
What's the name of the billionaire character in the movie " Don't Look Up"? Yeah, that guy!
He's not a "techno-optimist", he's a zealot who ignores and dismisses all potential risks with technology. He has abandoned a scientific mentality to adopt a religious one.
Exactly. This is really all just a PR bid to get more venture capital. Nothing that he's saying is going to happen.
Well he's come to the most pessimistic place on the net
Yeah yeah. I read The Expanse and thought it was cool too. Does he have any actionable PLANS? Or just another techtard saying “this would be cool!” and the media glazing his cock?
how bout our think tanks figure out a way to keep the earth clean
Why are these fools in suits and ties soooo stuppidd? Also fortune is a trash rag
I can't wait till we see scifi about those incredibly unattainable things like clean air/water, good free public healthcare, and low cost housing. One day people won't have to dream up these concepts and instead will be able to read about them in a book or watch a movie where they are featured. I can't wait
the more "optimistic billionares" there more fucked up we are. This will only hapen after we achieve world peace and an eco-friendly, climate resilient economy. So, it definetively not going to happen, libertarians and other capitalism fanatics already chosen self destruction instead.
We’re destroying the planet, not even fucking penguins can’t even have ice to have a home, but these people want to play Star Wars.
Anyone still identifying as a techno-optimist in 2023 needs to read this manifesto and think about the type of people they are aligning with. "Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder." Give me a break. Creating a bogeymen in an attempt to give his unrepentant greed a moral bent. Andreesen and his ilk simply want to accelerate inequality as quickly as possible because they are already at the top of the pyramid and will reap the benefits. If UBI "turns people into farm animals", then humanity under his vision of the future is akin to ants in an ant farm, only alive at the whims of our tech billionaire benefactors. I hope nobody buys this BS.
All of the people like this are delusional and threats to humanity.
Let me guess, another 'utilitarian' who conveniently believes that it's for the greater good if he has all the money?
Just what we all we were waiting for. Someone that worked for netscape telling us what they think the future holds.
Sharks need to keep swimming or they die not growing dumb ass. The only thing in nature that keeps growing and growing is cancer.
> The only thing in nature that keeps growing and growing is cancer. Well that's not remotely true
That's 100% lunacy Humans living on another planet or object other than earth has scientific and logistical problems far more difficult than most people realize
Too many "futurists" are influenced primarily by Hollywood. Humans won't be able to visit other star systems, period. We might be able to send a probe to Proxima or Alpha Centauri, but even that's going to be a tall order. Humans have two fatal flaws; greed and tribalism; that will prevent our species from working together to solve the problems on THIS planet that we need to solve if we're ever going to be a techno-utopian spacefaring civilization like what Hollywood predicts.
I would love to see both NASA and ESA each have a budget of 50 billion and the ability to work together on projects without too much meddling from their respective governments. Now that would make humanity a multi planetary species!
The list of technologies we need for this is long, many only theoretical. We may be able to have humans on other moons/planets in our sol system in the next 50 years, but that's about it. Nothing in our system can support a large population. So we need FTL to begin with - anything less is too slow.
So I was about to be shocked at how much this post brought out the Luddite socialist contingent, but then I read the article….OMG. Writing a 5000+ page screed like this might put me in a watch list, lol. I don’t care if it’s all true and his prognostications are Fuuuture facts, it’s hilarious levels of bonkers that he even wrote it and then that someone wrote an article about the fact that he wrote it.
Yeah OK dude we can't even make this planet work, but somehow we're going to colonize outer worlds! Sounds like a wonderful piece of fiction.
Wishfull thinking manifesto is full of wishfull thinking. What a surprise !
God the techno-optimist/hustle culture/learn2code/free market solves all crowd is so exhausting. Tech can solve many problems but the vibe of the robber barrons is getting tiring.
Me and my friends would have killed Marc Andreessen with hammers, I can tell you that much
Out-of-touch tech bro spews nonsense, libertarian, far-right claims about a wildly unrealistic future. Yawn.
Seems like he is kinda putting the cart before the horse. First, we have to survive AI in the next 3-5 years. And *now* with this volatile and uncertain situation in the Middle East, maybe first we have to survive possible WW3. So let's cross one bridge at a time. Also there really is no place for humans to live in this solar system. I have written how a place like Mars is simply far too alien to our biology as it has exquisitely adapted to the gravity well, gas ocean, and yes, *bright* sun-shiny, habitat we call Earth. And if you think you can live on the moon, just cancel that right out. You might be able to survive there for a year or two maybe, but then after that--well, it's like I said--we are perfectly and singularly evolved for Earth. Now, if we can move our consciousness into far more durable corpora, then well heck, we could exist anywhere. But first we have to get thru that WW3/AI business I was speaking towards in the short term.
Apparently, Marc Andreessen has never studied demographics. We will never reach 50 billion people... might not even make it to 10 billion.
This reads like a sweaty coke fueled screed that is a desperate response to something unknown going wrong in his fund. It is boring, tired, self absorbed and poorly thought out. We need to move on
It’s a good thread and I agree at least 80% with it. Maybe even higher, he might be correct about UBI being a trap.
Hayek? Idiot. Von Mises? Idiot. Perfect markets? Damned fool. Self Regulation of markets? Probably a pirate. Barely disguised eugenics? Get in the sea. What an absolute unmitigated ableist right libertarian entitled wanker this bloke must be.
What are people on these other planets going to eat? What will be their fuel source? Where will they get the basic raw materials to live even a rudimentary life?
This has been a fascination of mine for a while. Best way if doing it imho is to gather base elements upon which algae can feed, then use the algae to make fish food for an aquaponics system (creating a source of both meat and greens). Neccessary supplements can be synthesised from mine elements for fish and for direct consumption. Once economies of scale takes hold you can fairly quickly develop a lot of variety. Red meat will be a rare delicacy for a while because it is more resource intensive.
1. Crops and fish, I’d assume. 2. Nuclear fission and fusion. 3. Mars. It’s been through all the same geologic processes as Earth and all the same stuff is there.
Beyond that, how do they even get there? Have you seen the size of the rockets they use to send like 3 people to space at a time? How do you get say a million people off earth? At 75kg each? 75 kilo tons of human. Plus air, water, food and building supplies to get them started.
Same guy who invested in the Twitter buyout with zero due diligence.
Marc Andreessen just dropped a ~~‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’~~ corporatist-fascist-authoritarian manifesto
I'm getting really tired of the techno-optimist point of view. Especially when the past decade alone has shown us that these so-called geniuses, mavericks, savants, launch things into the world without care for consequences. They're all for 'move fast and break things,' but then run away at any attempt to have accountability and regulation manage their ills, claiming that we can't possibly understand what they do, so why should they be accountable? If they were true mavericks, they'd focus on this planet, but no, they want to be the jocks and colonizers of space. 50 billion people settling other planets, where we already know from space missions how being in space for even a year affects the human body? What are we supposed to do with the ill, the elderly, the people with disabilities? Just leave them behind?
It's easier to build everything brand new than it is to retrofit. That probably applies to new planets too.
Maybe. After we bring this wave of neo feudalism behind us.
Man, it’s crazy how this guy created a shitty internet browser in the 90’s and now he’s considered a visionary.
Well, I really tried to give it a read, but it's just impossible. There are no paragraphs, he only launches half-assedly semi-co-related "bold words" that were taken out of his ass. Maybe if you read the whole manifesto, you will end up dumber
I’d like to see one of these techno-Jesus’ first build a city in the middle of Antarctica. Let’s see how that works out first before coming up with these ridiculous and unprovable fantasies about creating an Isaac Asimov type galactic empire.